Kablooooey

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Nothing too exciting on the knitting front. However we blew up another stove last night....Second Son came over yesterday to kill some time. While he was here, I thought it'd be a good time to pull out the stove and clean behind it as we are getting a new-to-us stove from my BFF, F, next week. So he did, I cleaned (it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be) and 2ndS moved it back. I made a cake (Lemon Poppy Seed). A couple of hours later, YS preheated the oven to make his famous meat balls. All of the sudden there was a large POP and sparks came out of the CLOSED oven door. We turned off the oven, but that didn't help. We flipped the breaker we though the oven was on (it's the one that always pops when we have the oven, microwave and rice cooker going at the same time). It wasn't the right one. So we grabbed the really hot unit, pulled it out and unplugged it. The stove heating unit finally stopped producing tons of heat and bright light.

Called maintenance and they came over. Pulled out the broken heating unit and replaced it with one grabbed from some other stove. It worked, but the oven wouldn't shut off. So they tried to replace the switch and couldn't. So we got a "new" stove. It is nice and clean, works, but like every other stove we've had, the burners all lean to the back of the stove. The stove doesn't lean, the burners do. Consequently, all the pots, pans, etc., are tilted back, sometimes slide off the burners...what a pain.

The good news is, as I mentioned earlier, my BFF is giving us the stove from his house when they move next week. It is far more energy efficient than the stoves the complex provides, so maybe out electric bill will drop just a tiny bit! And a big refrigerator, too, which we may hook up the ice maker in. Haven't decided yet. It's been over ten years since we've had ice in the house I just don't know if it's that necessary or even nice....

Our first stove....turned itself early one morning around 2:00. I woke up and thought someone was cooking a roast or something like that. The oven had literally turned itself on and wouldn't stop heating. It just kept getting hotter and hotter and hotter. Too hot for us to pull it out and unplug it. We called maintenance and they came over rather quickly for a 2 AM call. Apparently the same switch that went out on stove #2 had gone out on stove #1. I'd say there is a problem with these particular (very old) HotPoint models. If this had happened when we were away for a full day, or on vacation, our townhome would have have burned and probably damaged others.... I mean I know you shouldn't leave a stove on when you leave the house, but is it really necessary to unplug it just to go to bed?



I've been having such luck with being able to maintain a simple stitch pattern while making socks, Mockery looks like a fun one to try. There is a very delicate pattern there which is hard to see from the pic. If you download the adobe file, you can enlarge the pic and see it nicely.

I did get some work done on my second Samhain Sunset Sock. The heel flap is almost finished! I think I've figured out why I'm having better luck with stitch patterns within my socks. It's the magic loop. Less of chance to "forget" where one is in the pattern with two needles vs three needles. And much less chance of a st falling off (although it's happened once or twice when I got distracted). So maybe I'll be able to branch out on my socks and go from plain vanilla to some parfait!

CrazyAuntPurl has some good thoughts on the effects of minimalism as it pertains to consumerism on the universe at large.

The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red by Ellen Rimbauer

OMG what a waste of time and energy, both mine and the author's. The publisher set this up to be a "true" story based on an old diary. In fact, it's nothing more than really poor fiction written by Ridley Pearson.

Don't bother with it. The story has potential if a good author would work with it.
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